NFL Players Kneeling During The Anthem

I do not like it, but I support the players who want to make a protest. Think ratings will continue to decline for the NFL? President Trump went after the kneelers yesterday, and I could see his supporters watching less football.

The protest of disrespecting the flag and anthem has long been employed to draw attention to oneself and one's particular gripe with our country. In the 60s and 70s, the protest often involved burning the flag. Then as now, the irony of citizens using the freedoms symbolized by the flag (and the anthem and our constitution) to complain about those freedoms isn't lost. It was and remains pathetic. The idea that another slice of the top 0.1% in income and wealth from the sports and entertainment field is complaining about "inequality" or anything else draws no tears or sympathy from the crowd. Nor should it. Most just realize how close we came last November to avoiding a further extension of tyranny by churlish political correctness.

A more meaningful sign of protest and one that would earn respect would've been for the NFL to match the president's personal financial contributions to those who lost so much during the hurricanes, a la JJ Watt. Or fund shoe and clothing donations to best the example of Melania who gave her shoes to a needy hurricane victim when visiting Florida. Or fund battered womens' homes instead of support the appeal of players accused of abusing women. Clearly, the opportunity to become the bigger men escaped these brilliant scholar-athletes. Instead, many players choose to disrespect our flag and the very freedoms that enable them to earn a high wage playing a game they love all the while complaining of a president/politician who made a political statement in response to their political statement. That's just childish.

I for one am simply tired of paying attention to childish behavior.

While I understand both sides I would rather of seen them carry a sign that says Trump is Wrong (keep it clean as there are children watching) vs the disrespecting the flag. Just MHO

Science Chic,
Not all Steelers stayed in the locker room. Please read about Alejandro Villanueva, the left tackle of the Steelers, A USMA grad, 3 tours in Afganistan as an Army Ranger. He saluted the flag and stood for the anthem..

Happy Camper,
You post indicates that this protest is about Trump not the "social Injustice" that Kaepernick based his refusal to stand for the national anthem in 2016, before Trump was elected.

ramage

I am a daughter of a WWII vet and believe me I have my own opinion of those who do not respect the flag but at the same time Trump turned this into a mess and for what? To get into the spot light, if he could stay off of Twitter and actually start running this country this would not be happening.

He turned this in to something different those that are kneeling now are not doing it because of racial injustice they are now trying to point out it is for freedom of speech.

I do not agree with them disrespecting the flag and this wonderful country that is wrong but now it is no more that two bullies fighting in a school yard for attention both sides need to grow up, football players need to play football and Trump needs to run the country. All of this crap is childish this country is in sad shape right now when crap like this gets more headlines instead of the fire and hurricane issues and how can we help so many people that are in need.

It is about time all these so called men put their big boy panties on and move on this is not what we should be concentrating on right now.

From Zerohedge.com 9/26/2017

McMaken: Stop Wrapping The Flag Around Pro Sports


Desperate to fill hours and hours of air time on 24-hour news channels, media corporations have made sure the discussion of the correct posture of National Football League players has been front and center.

Apparently, before grown men can chase a little toy around a grassy field for a few hours, it's absolutely essential that they take part in a variety of pro-government rituals. This was not always the case, though, and prior to the twentieth century, it was hardly expected that a ballgame be preceded by a recitation of the national anthem or any other song of national allegiance.

Indeed, the current pantomime in which NFL players are expected to stand at attention for the national anthem is of extremely recent origin. As Tom Curran pointed out on Comcast Sportsnet, prior to 2009, football players "weren't on the field for the national anthem and instead generally remained in the locker room."

And why did players start making a display of their "patriotism" in 2009? It turns out the government gave them taxpayer money to do so:

In 2009, Barack Obama's Department of Defense began paying hundreds of thousands towards teams in a marketing strategy designed to show support for the troops and increase recruitments. The NFL then required all players and personnel to be on the sidelines during the national anthem, in exchange for taxpayers dollars. Prior, the national anthem was played in the stadium but players had the option of staying in the locker room before heading out to the field.

Furthermore, teams that showed "Veteran's Salutes" during games were paid upwards of $5.1 million dollars.

In total, 6.8 million in taxpayer money was doled out to sports teams - mostly NFL teams - for so-called "paid patriotism."

When the Pittsburgh Steelers elected to stay in the locker room during the anthem this past Sunday, this was denounced by many as "boycotting" the national song, although this would have just been standard practice a decade ago.

Playing the Anthem: A "Tradition" Promoted by War
Not surprisingly, if we look into the history of playing the national anthem at sporting events, we find war was an important factor.

Before the First World War, playing the national anthem or sporting events was quite rare. No one expected it to be done, and hiring a band was expensive.

According to mlb.com, the most conspicuous early use of the national anthem was at game 1 of the 1918 World Series during World War I. Unexpectedly, during the seventh-inning stretch, a military band played the national anthem in an effort to liven up a reportedly surly and war-wearied group of spectators.

Use of the anthem spread from there. The anthem's use expanded even more during the Second World War, as Matt Soniak notes:

During World War II, baseball games again became venues for large-scale displays of patriotism, and technological advances in public address systems allowed songs to be played without a band.

"The Star-Spangled Banner" was played before games throughout the course of the war, and by the time the war was over, the pregame singing of the national anthem had become cemented as a baseball ritual, after which it spread to other sports.
But even after the war, the habit of playing the anthem at every game was not firmly in place until the Vietnam war.

In most cases, the use of the anthem was not directly subsidized as it was with the taxpayer-funded paid-patriotism scam. Usually, team owners quite voluntarily employed the anthem as a marketing gimmick. In times of war, team owners were happy to use the anthem as a type of advertising to make an emotional connection between the customers — i.e., the spectators — and the team's product. Wrapping a commercial product in the flag and apple pie to increase sales is hardly unique to pro sports. But pro sports may have used this tactic more successfully than any other industry.

Unfortunately for the NFL, this tried-and-true marketing strategy may be backfiring as the teams' employees — and surely many spectators as well — see no problem with using the anthem ritual as an opportunity to make a political statement. The result has been a marketing nightmare for the league.

Although this has been taken up by politicians such as Donald Trump as a matter of critical importance, it really should be viewed as just a private business matter. Tho Bishop has noted that, as private firms, each team should be free to discipline or fire any employee who might cause customer displeasure or a loss of revenue for the team. The question of course, is whether it might be even worse — in terms of earnings — for a team to eliminate its most talented athletes. That's a business decision the owners will have to make.

Everything Is Political
To a certain extent, though, the pro sports industry has called down the current controversy on itself. Having wrapped their product in the political garb of Old Glory and the national anthem for decades, team owners are now having to pay the piper. Since many of their customers now expect pro sports to be political — but only political in a way that matches their particular ideology — team owners now face a headache that could have been totally avoidable.

It didn't have to be this way. In recent years, many reasonable observers have complained that society is becoming increasingly politicized. Today, it's easy to find ways in which once apolitical activities have been ruined by ideological posturing. Late night talk shows are now essentially hard-left propaganda. Selling tacos is denounced as "cultural appropriation," and every Hollywood awards show is now a series of political speeches. In the case of professional sports, however, there's nothing recent about this sort of politicization.

For nearly a century, pro sports have been politicized through their habitual use of the American state's symbols and songs. The Pentagon knows this, which is why it so enthusiastically shoveled millions of dollars of taxpayer money at the NFL as part of an advertising blitz. But even back in 1918, the US government knew the potential of politicizing sporting events. This is why, during the 1918 World Series, the Navy made sure it had a recruiting station at Wrigley Field.

From The Daily Sheeple 9/30/2017


A new report from The Armstrong and Getty Radio Show has sent shockwaves throughout the sports world after it was claimed that members of the NFL’s Oakland Raiders may have purposefully allowed their star quarterback to get sacked multiple times after he refused to kneel during the National Anthem.
If true, this would essentially mean that an NFL football game was illegally thrown over anger that one of the teams star white players did not believe that kneeling during the nation’s anthem was the correct way to protest supposed racial injustice in America.
In other words, an epic level scandal.
During the anthem, virtually the entire team was seen kneeling other than the teams coaches and star quarterback Derek Carr. Unfortunately, this may have not set well with the team’s offensive line as they were apparently the players who spearheaded the entire idea to kneel as a team in the first.
“This is one hell of a scandal with the NFL, could ruin the whole league,” claimed the show before detailing the fact that Carr was sacked two times in a row on the teams second drive and that the team’s usually dependable center snapped the ball at the wrong time in three different instances. Extremely capable receivers also made multiple “weird” drops of passes thrown by Carr that T.V. announcers even noted at the time.
The radio show then revealed bombshell “insider information” from an “extremely reliable” source who claimed that members of the Oakland Raiders did indeed throw the game as a sort of punishment for Carr choosing to not use the countries anthem to make a political statement.
“He wants to stand alone, he can stand alone on the field,” one of the teams offensive lineman said, according to the shows source. Keep in mind, the offensive line are literally the guys whose job it is to protect the quarterback, in this case the star player who didn’t kneel.
Amazingly, the circumstantial (and possible direct) proof didn’t end there as the show then claimed that this same source also revealed that a local team reporter got wind of the story and asked a team official for comment. What he was apparently told in response has all the hallmarks of a team trying to cover up a major scandal.
“If you report on this, you will be blackballed, you will not get access to the Raiders period,” the reporter was supposedly told. “Your career covering the team will be over”.
While there are obviously major legal and ethical issues if this is true, it also paints a sad picture of a football league divided by a political and media establishment all too happy to cause as much racial divide in the country as possible. For as long as Americans focus on differences between each other, the global elites power remains completely unthreatened.
FULL REPORT:

Additional Reading:
Raiders’ Derek Carr prays while teammates protest, but says ‘we were together’
Raiders’ Del Rio answers whether ugly loss had anything to do with NFL protests
Raiders offensive line opens wide for Washington in 27-10 loss
Authors Note: Its also important to consider that there is almost no chance that any member of the Raiders organization, whether coaches, the front office, or players (especially Carr himself) will publicly admit that this happened if it is indeed true. The sheer amount of mayhem it would cause is enough to keep almost anyone quiet. Anonymous player quotes and sources may be all we will ever have to go on.

It will be very interesting if that Raiders report is true. Boycotting the games? It will probably do me good to go out hiking and enjoying the fall weather instead of watching whiny millionaires on TV this Sunday, Monday, and Thursday.